I don’t quite understand how one writes an article like this without putting the amount of debt into context, where is the critical thinking here? The S&P 500 market cap is like $25t, $10t in debt doesn’t sound crazy
I'm not clear on how market cap relates to the amount of debt in the way you're phrasing it.
The dollar amount of bonds + interest that corporations have to pay back doesn't change day to day like market cap does. The S&P500 fell 33% between Sept - Dec 2008. That didn't change the amount of debt corporations had to pay back. Unless they received a bailout, all that changed was that they could now borrow at near-zero rates.
My point is that if you buy something (a company in this case), financing ~29% of the purchase price with debt ($10t/($10t+$25t)) does not feel super levered.
You point is valid as well, and the useful context (again not provided by the article) would be metrics like debt/EBITDA or fixed charge coverage ratios
the credit markets are much larger than the equities markets, but corporate credit is a decent comparison in size since we are removing government debt from the equation
I think your observation paints an even rosier picture than you intended though, many of the corporate debt issuers do not publicly trade their shares
